


specter

by Artikka



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universes, Anakin Skywalker is Not a Jedi, Force Shenanigans (Star Wars), Force Temple Shenanigans, Gen, Human Disaster Anakin Skywalker, Slavery, Somewhat Unreliable Narrator, Tatooine Slave Culture (Star Wars), because, it's Vader, mentioned Tatooine Slave Revolution, that weird feeling you get when meeting your more successful self from an alternate universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-04
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27376066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artikka/pseuds/Artikka
Summary: It clicks. This specter is him--Skywalker, is Skywalker, but--“The Jedi never found you.” Vader says, the conclusion suddenly obvious. “. . . they never freed you.”The specter snarls and takes a step forward. “I freed myself.”***Or, Vader meets an Anakin Skywalker who never left Tatooine, and questions about his own freedom ensue.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Darth Vader, Mentioned Sheev Palpatine & Darth Vader, Mentioned Shmi Skywalker & Darth Vader
Comments: 42
Kudos: 305





	specter

He stands alone in a Temple.

This. . . this is impossible.

What stands before him is an impossibility, not the wisdom the force had promised him he’d find. It is a hallucination of a forgotten life, nothing more, and Darth Vader does not have time to waste chasing dreams and figments of a long-buried imagination.

A specter stands before him.

It is Skywalker, who he was so sure he’d wiped the last vestiges of from himself before coming to this force-forsaken temple. 

It is Skywalker. . . but not quite.

This Skywalker isn’t dressed in the traditional Jedi garb, nor does he carry himself like one. His flesh arms remain, both of them, although his left leg below the knee is a prosthetic _(low quality but heavily modified--an Outer Rim prosthetic through and through)_. His face is scarred like Vader’s once had been, but despite what Vader has forgotten, he can recognize what he sees _(the scar curling up Skywalker’s chin is the mark of a lash, not a saber, and one meant to hurt, at that. There is no scar over his eye)_. But most striking is his posture--the way he carries himself, deceptively relaxed but eyes alert and shoulders set, cautious but too cautious to show it, ready to fight at a second’s notice--the posture of a freedman, with a past too recent to forget.

Vader had stood like that once, when he first joined the Temple, paranoid that any slaver would try to take him back. But the Jedi most certainly hadn’t liked that, and eventually Vader did forget.

Like he forgot everything else that he once was.

The specter _(could he even call it that, it looked so solid, so real, more real than Vader himself felt from time to time)_ shifts, analyzing Vader with wary eyes.

Vader speaks first.

“You are Anakin Skywalker.” he says simply, waiting for this temple driven specter _(or trick, or test)_ to shed light on why the force has called him here. The vocoder makes his voice sound resolute and threatening, but he speaks the words with hesitance. With fear.

The specter shifts again. “Yes,” he says, a Tatooinian accent lilting the edge of the word. Vader had dropped the accent within a year of coming to the Temple, although he never truly stopped relying on Huttese curses until he donned the mask.

“Who are you?” the specter asks, flat and demanding in a way Vader no longer dared to be, “Why am I here?”

Vader doesn’t answer. He’s still gazing, unmoving, at the specter, cataloguing each and every detail of his appearance.

“Answer me, _spirit_!” The word is said in the hissing, bitter tongue of Tatooine, the accent fresh and sharp and _angry_.

It clicks. This specter is _him--_ Skywalker, is _Skywalker_ , but--

“The Jedi never found you.” Vader says, the conclusion suddenly obvious. “. . . they never freed you.”

The specter snarls and takes a step forward. “I freed _myself_.”

_I had a dream I freed all the slaves._

“Only yourself?” The question slips out before he can stop it, and he resolutely quells the emotions and memories that come with it. His past is behind him. It is nothing to him anymore.

Nothing.

“No.” Skywalker says, looking at him with a newfound curiosity. “No. We freed _everyone_.”

_We._

_Everyone._

So is this the force’s game, then? Haunting him with childish dreams and might-have-beens? Trying and failing to dredge up guilt that Skywalker might have held, before he had burned on the shores of Mustafar?

He very nearly turns to stride out of the Temple then and there. The force should know that such games no longer work on Vader.

But there is. . . one more thing.

He supposes the echoes of the past aren’t as dead as he believed them to be, after all.

“Your mother?” he asks.

Skywalker’s suspicion rises, swirling in the force around him. “What’s it to you?”

“Nothing,” he snaps. “It’s nothing to me.”

Skywalker grins slightly then, the corner of his lip curling upward in a bitter twist. He takes a step forward with a gait like a nexu circling its prey.

“No,” he says, with utter certainty, “you’re lying. It _is_ something to you.”

He stops in his tracks.

“You aren’t a spirit at all, are you? No. . . my _mother_ is something to you, our freedom is something to you, _I_ am something to you. . . you _know_ me.”

Skywalker stills, and the change is jarring. “Anakin Skywalker,” he says, accusatory and triumphant all at once, “what went wrong in your universe?”

No.

_No._

He is not _Skywalker--_ he is not _Anakin_ \--he is not that weak, powerless, spineless boy--he is Vader, he is _Darth Vader_ , and he has worked too hard to bury his past to let it resurface and weaken him now.

“That name no longer has any meaning to me.” Vader says, the words coming out harsh and grating through the vocoder.

Skywalker jerks back as if burned. “You’d reject the name your mother gave you?”

A face flashes before his eyes, unbidden and unwanted. A woman with kind eyes and a weary set to her chin, dark hair twisted loosely and pinned up above her neck. She’s saying something--singing a lullaby, perhaps, or whispering reassurances after a long day under the suns. Her hands are calloused, but her touch gentle. She smiles. 

Shmi Skywalker.

It. . . No. It matters little to him. That is _Skywalker’s_ past, and Vader has no use for it. Not anymore. He is powerful now, and beyond such. . . sentiment.

“That,” he says, less steady than he’d like, “matters little to me. I am no longer that person.”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Skywalker says, and the scowl twisting his features suddenly looks rather disgusted. 

“The name Anakin Skywalker,” Vader repeats, “no longer has any meaning to me.”

The force around them roils unsteadily. Skywalker scoffs, clenching his jaw. “What name _has_ meaning to you, then?” 

“I am Darth Vader.”

“Darth Vader,” Skywalker repeats, sounding distinctly mocking. “And who gave you that name?”

“That is irrelevant.”

“You said the Jedi bought you. But taking your name doesn’t seem like a very Jedi thing to do. Who was it, then?”

_Bought_ him--the Jedi hadn’t _bought_ him--had they? 

Well. It hardly matters any more.

“Enough of this.” Vader says. “Why has the force called me here?”

“You certainly don’t seem like a Jedi,” Skywalker continues. Then, suddenly, “Ah. You still have a Master, then.”

A rage rises within him, sudden and overwhelming. He is _Darth Vader,_ one of the most powerful men in the galaxy, with the galaxy at his fingertips. He is _Darth Vader,_ and he has--has a Master.

No.

No.

Sidious has made him _powerful_. Sidious has helped him see the truths of the galaxy that the Jedi had blinded him to. Sidious has opened his eyes to the betrayal of those he had once called friends. Sidious has exposed the corruption of the Senate and created a regime that no one dares to oppose. Sidious has shown him his true place in the galaxy.

Sidious is what he was always destined for. To pretend otherwise would be foolish.

“No,” he says, finally. “Sidious has granted me power. He has shown me my true destiny.”

Skywalker narrows his eyes, something ancient and familiar settling in his features. “Do you call him _Master?_ ”

The lack of denial is answer enough. Skywalker speaks again. “He put you in that suit. Didn’t he?”

Vader snarls. “A _Jedi_ put me in this suit--”

“No,” Skywalker interrupts flatly, “maybe a Jedi was the one to give you the injuries. But the suit’s build has “Master” written all over it, _jhehora_.”

_Jhehora._

_Chainless._

A slave so broken, their master has no need of chains or chips to keep them broken and obedient. A slave whose very spirit within has been tied down and shackled.

It’s a word that inspires a sick mixture of pity, disgust, terror, and sympathy in any slave of Tatooine, no matter how long separated. Vader remembers, suddenly, his mother-- _Skywalker’s_ mother, pulling him aside and whispering to him fiercely never to forget himself, to always remember that he is worth more than what the masters make of it.

He pushes the memory down.

“You’ve forgotten yourself.”

The blasted specter is still at it, digging at the cracks in Vader’s mind and trying to widen them into crevasses. It is maddening, and Vader has put up with it for long enough. He should have left this Temple behind a long time ago.

Clearly there is no wisdom to be found here.

“Anakin Skywalker was weak,” he says at last, turning to look away from the specter. “I destroyed him.”

Skywalker sneers, unimpressed. “Because your master told you to.”

With that, he dissipates.

**Author's Note:**

> jhehora, meaning chainless, is a word I completely made up on the spot so uh  
> yeah I'm not the one to go to for language expertise lol
> 
> anyways leave a comment/kudos and tell me what you think! my tumblr's @ilonga for anyone who wants to yell


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